


Could Hold The World

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, platonic in that married vibe they do, two senior citizens being grumpy about youngters these days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 05:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13228890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: The Fool is not drunk, Fitz is not yet that old, and they can agree that youngster these days are exhausting. After a celebration, two friends taking care of each other.





	Could Hold The World

**Author's Note:**

> It follows canon up until the end of Clerres. After that, well, my tears mangled the last few pages of my book so much that I only remember that Fitz was going back to Buckkeep and that he was going to get to be with his family and finally be happy, right? _RIGHT_? Right.

The Fool is drunk. Not that it shows, of course: at the ball he was still gracious and smiling and cheerful, dancing with both Hope and Dream before the girls were taken away to sleep, and with the delegates from the Wild Rains, and he schools his face when Bee barely gives him a curt nod and a tense ‘Teacher’.

But to Fitz who knows him well, he can’t hide the brightness in his eyes or how when he laughs is almost a giggle, how he sways with the music even when he should be standing still. So Fitz stands, reaching for the cane that he still can’t believe he needs and going towards where the Fool is talking with Nettle. 

“Da, leaving so soon?” Nettle chides him, but she approaches to kiss his unSilvered cheek. 

“You know I’ve never been one for these reunions.” Fitz tells her, before turning towards the Fool. “Fool, could you get a guard to help me? I think I drank a little too much and I worry about the stairs.”

“Nonsense, Fitz, I’m more than capable of helping you.”

The way he says it means that he knows what Fitz was trying to do, so Fitz just smiles at him: he wasn’t, really, trying to be subtle about it. And the help is real enough, a lot of the time, with his knee: after the explosion and the rocks, it quite never recovered, and with the Silver that covers half of his face and hand, group healing has proven to be simply too dangerous to try on him. 

As is, it’s long use that has him put his arm around the Fool’s shoulders, and he does lean some of his weight against him.

“I don’t know if I should thank you or chide you,” the Fool says softly. “I’m not one of your granddaughters that you need to trick me into bedtime, Fitz.”

“Of course not,” He agrees. “Feel free to go back once we finish with these blasted stairs.”

“I’m too old for these youngsters and their reunions,” the Fool scoffs.

“You don’t look a day over three hundred,” Fitz jokes, chuckling when the Fool hits his side. 

“Says the almost-eighty-years-old-gray-haired-grandpapa.”

“Not all of my hair is gray yet!” But that, Fitz knows, is barely true these days and the Fool giggling against his shoulder says as much.

The fire is already lit when they get to his rooms, the winter chill all but absent, for which his old bones are grateful. He allows himself to drop unceremoniously over a couch, complaining when the Fool makes him take off his jacket (”you’re going to wrinkle it terribly like that!”), closing his eyes, hearing the Fool humming as he moves around his rooms with ease and familiarity, hearing the clinking of china and jars until the Fool presses a warm and fragant cup of lavender tea. 

“Trying to prove that you’re not drunk, friend?” Fitz asks with a smile.

The Fool huffs, sitting down by his side, leaning down to take of the terrible Jamaillain-style shoes he’s wearing –and making a noise of such contentment at just that that Fitz leaves his tea and instead reaches for the Fool’s feet, tugging them up on the couch and over his lap so that he can press thumbs against the soreness, actually managing to surprise him. 

“You don’t have to– _oh_. Oh, that’s lovely. Yes, please, thank you, Fitz.” Fitz chuckles as his friend seems to melt against the other side of the couch, like an over sized cat.

By the time he’s done and he carefully puts the Fool’s feet down, their tea is not even lukewarm. The Fool makes a displeased noise at this, standing up to refill their cups and, when he comes back, he sits closer to him, leaning his head against his shoulder and by now, ten years after he was Silvered, it’s a reflection, a precaution after two loving granddaughters who could have injured themselves: he raises his head and tries to shift so that nothing of his Silver touches him.

“Careful, Fool!”

“When have I ever,” the Fool drawls drawls with perfect enunciation and dramatic flair, “Not been careful with you, Beloved?”

Fitz thinks that he could answer that. He could name date and place where the Fool had to be ruthless, had to put fate before friendship. He has plenty of scars on him that talk of those times: deaths, even, upon him, upon them both. 

But he feels the way the Fool tenses against his shoulder, realizing what he said, realizing the truth that his wine soaked brain didn’t catch up deftly enough. And it’s not something that either of them needs right then or ever, really, between them. So he shifts his hold, puts gloved hand on the Fool’s shoulder, idly twisting so fine golden-white strands of hair that he can almost, almost feel, turning to press a kiss against the Fool’s forehead before he can set his chin atop the Fool’s head.

“I suppose I can’t deny that, Fitz.”


End file.
